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The chancellor, Philip Hammond, will team up with the Brexit secretary, David Davis, in an attempt to reassure businesses on Monday, amid claims the pair have been working increasingly closely together.

Britain could end up paying the European Union to retain access to the single market, David Davis and Philip Hammond have said, in a concerted attempt to signal that the government is willing to take a flexible approach to the looming Brexit negotiations.

Theresa May’s adviser on the future of work says the boom in the gig economy could have a significant impact on government finances, with self-employed workers and contractors paying more than £2,000 less a year on average in tax than employees doing equivalent jobs.

Philip Hammond, the chancellor, is coming under mounting pressure from Tory MPs to bring forward help for the NHS and social care services, amid dire warnings that council budget cuts are causing unsustainable problems.

Leaving the single market would be damaging to almost every sector of the British economy from manufacturing and energy to retail and financial services, according to a new report commissioned by an alliance of Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians trying to stop a hard Brexit.

The best joke in Philip Hammond’s autumn statement was the line about how he is injecting £400m of venture capital funding into the British Business Bank “to tackle the longstanding problem of our fastest-growing technology firms being snapped up by bigger companies, rather than growing to scale”.

There was a veneer of discipline in the chancellor’s handling of the UK’s public finances, after he ditched his predecessor’s strict target of balancing the budget in 2020 with three looser targets to be met in the next parliament.

Weaker business spending and a squeeze on consumers from higher inflation will dent the UK economy next year, but warnings for a post-referendum recession should prove unfounded, according to the government’s independent forecasters.

The UK’s vote for Brexit, Donald Trump’s US election win and a slowdown in Chinese economic growth are combining to create significant risks for the global banking sector, a leading ratings agency warned on Wednesday.

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The chancellor, Philip Hammond, will team up with the Brexit secretary, David Davis, in an attempt to reassure businesses on Monday, amid claims the pair have been working increasingly closely together.

Britain could end up paying the European Union to retain access to the single market, David Davis and Philip Hammond have said, in a concerted attempt to signal that the government is willing to take a flexible approach to the looming Brexit negotiations.

Theresa May’s adviser on the future of work says the boom in the gig economy could have a significant impact on government finances, with self-employed workers and contractors paying more than £2,000 less a year on average in tax than employees doing equivalent jobs.